AmongReaders.com Add a tiny library
πŸ“š AmongReaders β€” track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

Sold

Patricia McCormick Β· back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❀ = this matters to me Β· tap again βœ• = don’t care Β· again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❀️

Tricks

Ellen Hopkins Β· 627 pages

Five teenagers find themselves stuck in a horrifying wold of sexual slavery

Human TraffickingVerse NovelChild AbuseBleak
❀️

Little Peach

Peggy Kern Β· 190 pages

When Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother, she has just enough money to make it to New York City, where she hopes to move in with a friend. But once she arrives at the bustling Port Authority, she is confronted with the terrifying truth: she is alone and out of options. Then she meets Devon, a good-looking, well-dressed guy who emerges from the crowd armed with a kind smile, a place fo

Human TraffickingSexual Assault ContentChild AbuseBleak
πŸ™‚

Out of the Dust

Karen Hesse Β· 235 pages

"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. Wh

Verse NovelBleakEmotionalLyrical Prose
πŸ™‚

Living Dead Girl

Elizabeth Scott Β· 184 pages

Sexual Assault ContentChild AbuseBleakEmotional
πŸ™‚

Dime

E.R. Frank Β· 336 pages

Fourteen-year-old Dime, a foster child in Newark, New Jersey, finds love and family as a prostitute, but when her pimp rejects her for a new girl, will Dime have the strength to leave?

Human TraffickingSexual Assault ContentChild AbuseTeen Protagonist
πŸ™‚

Push

Sapphire Β· 176 pages

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
πŸ™‚

The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton Β· 328 pages

"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it - to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess." Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place. Ruth grows up in the shadow of her

BleakEmotionalChild AbuseFirst Person Narrator
πŸ™‚

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison Β· 309 pages

Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
πŸ™‚

Salvage the Bones

Jesmyn Ward Β· 274 pages

They heard it on the radio. A hurricane is coming, threatening the town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Esch's hard-drinking father can feel it in his bones. Esch and her brothers are trying to help prepare, but there are other worries too. Skeetah is watching his prized pit bull, helpless as her new litter dies one by one. Randall, when not preoccupied with basketball, is busy looking after the you

BleakEmotionalTeen ProtagonistLyrical Prose
πŸ™‚

When We Were Silent

Fiona McPhillips Β· 320 pages

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentEmotionalTeen Protagonist
πŸ™‚

Such a Pretty Girl

Laura Wiess Β· 224 pages

Haunted by flashbacks, fifteen-year-old Meredith learns that three years in prison has not changed the abusive father who molested her.

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
πŸ™‚

The Color Purple

Alice Walker Β· 274 pages

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeenth because of the sometimes explicit content, particula

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
πŸ™‚

Habibi

Craig Thompson Β· 672 pages

Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them. We follow them as their lives unfold together and apart; as they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world (not unlike our own) fueled by fear, lust, and

Slavery DepictedSexual Assault ContentChild AbuseLyrical Prose
πŸ™‚

Seduced in the Dark

C.J. Roberts Β· 378 pages

Human TraffickingSlavery DepictedSexual Assault ContentBleak
πŸ™‚

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison Β· 181 pages

Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her. When someone finally did, it was her fath

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentBleakEmotional
πŸ™‚

Because I Am Furniture

Thalia Chaltas

The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.

Verse NovelChild AbuseEmotionalTeen Protagonist
πŸ™‚

Raven

V.C. Andrews Β· 192 pages

Raven's life goes from bad to worse when her mother is arrested and sent to a rehabilitation center, and she is forced to go live with her abusive Uncle Reuben and his family.

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentTeen ProtagonistEmotional
πŸ™‚

Stolen: A Letter to My Captor

Lucy Christopher Β· 301 pages

Gemma, a British city-living teenager, is kidnapped while on holiday with her parents. Her kidnapper, Ty, takes her to the wild land of outback Australia. To Gemma's city-eyes, the landscape is harsh and unforgiving and there are no other signs of human life for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Here, there is no escape. Gemma must learn to deal with her predicament, or die trying to figh

EmotionalLyrical ProseTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
πŸ™‚

A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley Β· 377 pages

This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s *King Lear* centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, *A Thousand Acres* takes on t

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentLyrical ProseEmotional
πŸ™‚

Back Roads

Tawni O'Dell Β· 352 pages

"Harley Altmyer, the heartbreaking and lovable hero of Tawni O'Dell's debut novel, should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three beloved but unruly younger sisters. He has, at best, a shaky hold on the vicissitudes o

Child AbuseBleakSexual Assault ContentEmotional
πŸ™‚

Glimpse

Carol Lynch Williams

Verse NovelSexual Assault ContentEmotionalYoung Adult
πŸ™‚

White Oleander

Janet Fitch Β· 390 pages

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentEmotionalLyrical Prose
πŸ™‚

Live Through This

Mindi Scott Β· 304 pages

From the outside, fifteen-year-old Coley Sterling's life seems imperfect but normal, but for years she has buried her shame and guilt over a relationship that crossed the line and now that she has a chance at having a real boyfriend, Reece, the lies begin to unravel.

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentTeen ProtagonistEmotional
πŸ™‚

The Color of our Sky

Amita Trasi Β· 412 pages

1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old girl from the lower caste Yellamma cult of temple prostitutes has come of age to fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute. In an attempt to escape this legacy that binds her, Mukta is transported to a foster family in Bombay. There she discovers a friend in the high spirited eight-year-old Tara, the tomboyish daughter of the family, who helps her recover from

Human TraffickingSexual Assault ContentChild AbuseEmotional
πŸ“– New 2026 Kindles just released. See them on Amazon β†—